Saturday, 25 October 2014

I don't reckon Dolly Parton takes all that much interest in Scottish politics, but if she did her reaction to Johann Lamont's departure as manager of Labour's Scottish branch office might go something like this. Those of a musical bent who know the tune are welcome to sing it heartily.

Sunday, 19 October 2014

What a superb week it’s been in the Mother of Parliaments,
as long as you’re enthused by buttock-clenchingly awful puns and not too
concerned about democracy. The buzz-word on everyone’s lips was EVEL, the
stench of which filled the House of Commons on Tuesday. But, as our imperial masters’
exchanges steadily eroded listeners’ will to live, it was an open
question whether it really was a pun, or simply stood for “Egotistical Vultures
Endlessly Lying”.

The debate was supposed to be about Scotland, but just for a
laugh economy-sized Speaker John Bercow invented a new school rule that banned
everyone from actually using the word “Scotland”, on pain of being forced to do
gym in their underpants. This didn’t bother 90% of the participants, who weren’t
planning to venture anywhere near the S-word, preferring to stick to self-righteous
whining on behalf of constituents they ordinarily despise. However, it utterly discombobulated
the embattled enclave of SNP MPs, who found their attempts to haul the discussion
back on topic constantly smothered by pompous put-downs from the chair.

The three authors of the notorious Vow – that is, the guys
who were happy for the Daily Record to
print any old plop in their name as long as it was written on authentically
scabby-looking parchment - were absent on snivelling coward duties elsewhere.
So it was left to the Government’s one-man public address system, Wee Willie
Hague, to announce in booming tones that new powers for Scotland would definitely
arrive on schedule. Or maybe that was the 15:10 Trans-Pennine service from Wakefield,
it was hard to tell. Anyway, this is a bloke
who once wore a back-to-front baseball cap and boasted about sinking 14 pints
in a half-arsed attempt to look cool, so who fancies relying on that sort of judgement?

Not Gordon Brown, that’s for sure. Aghast at the public’s growing
realisation that his planet-sized brain occupied a thumbnail-sized universe,
and having been taken for an absolute mug by David Cameron, he was in full fidgeting
and fuming mode. Still, you couldn’t help but feel he was focusing less on constitutional
innovation than on panic-button damage limitation, now that Dave’s new-found
fascination with curtailing Scottish MPs’ voting rights was threatening to rip the
Labour Party’s knitting permanently to shreds. (It’s touching that Gordy thinks
the Scottish public will be daft enough to vote for Labour in the first place, but
I’m buggered if I’m going to be the one to tell him otherwise.)

Elsewhere in the chamber, MPs’ reaction to the Vow was as if
they’d just opened the fridge and found a giant rat smirking at them. “Not in
our name,” they spluttered, inconveniently for the Three Stooges and
predictably for everyone else over the age of five. The Smith Commission cement
mixer can chunter away as noisily as it likes, but its end results will still have
to face the wrecking ball of Parliamentary scrutiny. Oh, and planning
permission may have to wait while MPs fart about with a decades-long project to
turn the UK into a federal paradise half of them don’t want, so don’t get yer
hopes up, Jock.

Of course, advocates of “English votes for English laws” do have
a point, as long as you can work out what an “English law” is without your
cerebellum bursting like a clapped-out sofa. The West Lothian Question may have
broken loose from the attic at a spectacularly inconvenient time, but it’s a
serious constitutional issue. SNP MPs, uniquely, acknowledge this by voluntarily
abstaining from votes that don’t concern them, which is why we never hear their
views on the regulation of toad-sexing in Dorset.

At the risk of being inundated with furious tweets from
constitutional experts with nothing better to do, I’d say that most sentient
beings accept that the Question has three possible answers. The first, to abolish Holyrood entirely and line George Square with tanks to keep the
peace, is probably a non-starter, though I’m sure Call Kaye could come up with several punters who think it’s a
tremendous idea.

The second is devo-max bursting out all over, with all parts
of Britain enjoying more autonomy and Westminster’s responsibilities strictly limited
to defence, foreign policy and, er, belisha beacon maintenance around Whitehall.
Sorry, I must have been inhaling my screen wipes again, that’s a pipe dream. 800
unemployable peers scraping a living as the world’s most exquisitely attired
buskers? Civil service mandarins forced to move to areas where their neighbours
might keep whippets? London property prices collapsing to merely extortionate?
Never gonna happen to the UK, and by the same token never to Scotland either.

There is (ahem) a third possible answer, and I know it’s irritating
for self-appointed commentators who’d like its advocates to get back in their
boxes so they can apply padlocks. Independence is off the table for the moment, although, with odds shortening on the parliamentary Conservative Party morphing into a terminally
Eurosceptic Tory-UKIP coalition, that may soon change. However, and I’m sure John Redwood,
Vulcan ambassador to the Court of St James, would agree with me, as an answer to
the West Lothian Question it’s perfectly logical.

In that light, you can see why the powers-that-be within the
UK broadcasting cartel want to exclude Nicola from their General Election debates.
She’d probably talk the other participants around to the idea in no time.

Thursday, 9 October 2014

Fed up with the effin’ Tories, scunnered with scumbag Labour
or pissed off with pusillanimous Lib Dems?
Hard cheese, viewers in Scotland. In the aftermath of the referendum,
not only do the winners get to write history, but they’re given carte blanche to plaster their version
all over your TV screens till your eyeballs spontaneously combust.

Unless you’re Mystic Meg, it’s tricky to write a topical
blog without subjecting yourself to the occasional news broadcast, so watching the
conference season is a necessary evil, which you survive by gritting your teeth
and paying close attention to your booze-hangover balance. This year, however,
with flag-waving triumphalism accompanying the usual cacophony of cant, it’s
required the patience of Job not to hurl the telly down the nearest mineshaft.

How much more palatable the Labour jamboree might have been if
we ordinary punters had been granted Ed’s magic powers of forgetfulness! As it
was, we sat squirming as the faithful, oblivious to their looming “cost-of-lying
crisis” in Scotland, gleefully rang the bells for their heroes returning from the battlefield.

Smirkers-in-chief included Alistair Darling, displaying all
the magnanimity of a wasp with a bad case of piles, Jim Murphy, soon to publish
his self-help book on surviving the trauma of everyday stains, and Douglas Alexander,
still several voice-coaching sessions away from sounding as authoritative as
his big sister. Just out of camera-shot, Johann Lamont struggled to get through
security as the knives in her back kept setting off the metal detector. Meanwhile, on the
positive side, we rejoiced in the disappearance of world saviour Gordon Brown, who
had swept off aboard his chariots of wrath in search of a petition to hijack.

But there was still plenty to delight masochists, as Ed
Balls pledged to maintain the Tories’ welfare cap, albeit with a more
compassionate face, or at least as compassionate as his mad staring eyes would
allow. A 91-year-old firebrand’s passionate defence of the NHS moved delegates
to tears, which, for those who during the referendum campaign had denied it
needed defending, should have been tears of shame. And dear deluded Margaret
Curran undertook to discover how to regain the trust of Yes voters in the
Labour heartlands. Hi there, Mags, my
suggestion would be, “Leave public life forever and take that ragbag of
charlatans with you.”

Of course, as soon as Ed Balls started photocopying the
Tories’ policies, it merely encouraged them to go further. The Tory conference
was hard-core “We’re the Nasty Party, live with it” viewing all the way from the
opening ceremony, which featured the creepily enigmatic Grant Shapps and
serried ranks of Stepford ideologues in Union Jack T-shirts, to the finish,
when David Cameron thrilled his audience with deficit reduction plans based on,
ooh guess what, squeezing the poor. The only thing missing was Kenny Everett
rushing on stage wearing a pair of giant hands and yelling, “Let’s bomb Russia!”

Ruth Davidson, who spent the conference grinning as if she’d
bitten into a sandwich laced with Evo-Stik, was singled out as the new star in the
firmament, eligible to be applauded even by old buffers without the slightest
clue who she was. Immediately embraced as one of the family, she was awarded
the place of honour next to SamCam as Dave romped through his keynote list of
unfunded hand-outs to the middle class.

Sadly for Ruth, it’s unlikely the love will prove to be
unconditional. Thanks to Dave’s bizarre impression that voting No means Scotland
is full of embryonic Tories, welcoming the Osborne austerity agenda like
turkeys writing letters to Santa, he’s now expecting her to work miracles at
the 2015 General Election. When she inevitably disappoints him, he’ll have no
option but to abandon her in a pub somewhere. The hallmark of the Tories is,
after all, Ruthlessness.

But these days the party isn’t motivated solely by the urge
to give Big Issue sellers a kicking
and toss bricks to drowning people. An increasingly influential driving force, nibbling
away at what passes for its soul, is dread of the relentless advance of UKIP. Defecting MPs and councillors can always be
replaced, since the well-spring of power-crazy numbskulls never runs dry, but once
moneybags donors start jumping ship you’ve got a real crisis on your hands. If some of the conference rhetoric seemed
especially shrill this year, it may have been an attempt to divert the audience’s
attention from the sound of Nigel Farage sawing away at the floorboards beneath
them.

The policy arms race with UKIP is beginning to produce some
spectacular collateral damage. A glaring example is the European Convention on
Human Rights, good enough for Winston Churchill but not, apparently, addle-brained pipsqueak
Chris Grayling.

Grayling and his fellow hooligans are dismissing the ECHR as meddling frippery because it threatens
to stop us handing people we don’t like over to torturers. But don’t fret, chattering
classes, because when we unplug ourselves from that namby-pamby nonsense we’ll have our own British Bill of Rights! It’ll be drawn
up by Daily Mail journalists in their
spare time, beginning with “the right to shut up and applaud everything the
Government does, until it’s your turn to be arrested”.

And so, with a heavy sigh, to the Liberal Democrats, unless since
I started this post they’ve had an outbreak of honesty and renamed themselves “The Useful Idiot Party”. Where
the Tory conference came across as a resounding trumpet voluntary, the Lib Dem one
was more like a comb-and-tissue-paper rendition of We’ll Meet Again, although in their hearts they know we won’t.

So, no tittering missus, here’s the Lib Dem case for the
defence. For the last four-and-a-half years they’ve been driving a getaway car
for a masked gang carrying bulging sacks marked “Loot”, and they’ve just become
aware that these people may be thieves. Since they’ve
never broken the speed limit or parked on a double yellow line, they reckon they're a moderating influence, and we
should throw up our hands in gratitude and let them have the ignition keys for another five years. Oh,
and depending on how things pan out they may suddenly decide to work for a different gang,
but that’s none of our business.

As we considered whether "wasting voters' time" should be made a criminal offence, the post-indyref claptrap brigade came out in
force: Alistair Carmichael, the “bruiser” who’s really his mammy’s big tumfy, administering
a “stern rebuke” to Nicola Sturgeon for not ruling out independence for eternity;
the waspish (and still is) Malcolm Bruce, comparing the Salmond administration to the
Soviet politburo; and the gossamer-thin reality grip of Paddy Ashdown, classifying
the SNP alongside various fascist, extremist or looney-tunes outfits in Europe.

But somehow this didn’t matter, for as they burbled on you
could sense their imminent irrelevance, as if they’d taken a gulp of helium
before speaking and their voices had gone all tinny and gurgly. This was a
party enjoying a last picnic on the railway line, in blissful denial about the
InterCity 125 of electoral oblivion hurtling towards them.

Less widely reported than any of the above, partly through their own
choice but partly because their name contains a word that brings the BBC out in
a nasty rash, was the gathering last Saturday of Women for Independence. 1,000
of its members packed out St Matthew’s Church in Perth more comprehensively
than had been witnessed in decades of Sundays, and by all accounts had a whale
of a time sharing experiences, floating ideas and laying plans.

Could this be the future? A forum where participation
takes precedence over stage-management?
More concerned with changing things in future than name-calling
about the past? Driven by hope, not fear, career advancement or competitive
mania? Composed of individuals, not delegates, and with a thousand personal
visions rather than one stifling party line? Not seeking power, just striving to improve things for the better?

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Guest post by Gary Baldi, a first-time blogger - I do suspect that's a pseudonym, though - who I think should consider writing more often!

Those of you concentrating really hard may be aware that the Liberal
Democrats are currently convening in Glasgow, in an appropriately well-protected
shelter that goes by the name of the Armadillo.
They appear bullish about their electoral prospects, declaring that it’s
up to the voters whether they form the next coalition with Labour or with the
Tories. Presumably their manifesto is going to contain two different what-if
scenarios, or perhaps they’ll dispense with it altogether and just sell lottery
tickets.

Observers of opinion polls take a somewhat less optimistic stance,
viewing Lib Dem MPs not as versatile political operators with a gentle hand on
the helm of history, but as an endangered species, singing one last sweet but
sad refrain before obliteration.

Such an outcome will, of course, be a mere career blip for the
party’s high heid yins, such as Messrs Clegg, Cable and Alexander, established
as they are on the gilded path to ermine goons, a well-upholstered red bench
and a lifelong attendance allowance. But what about departing MPs of more
modest talents, whatever colour their rosettes may be? There simply aren’t
enough whelk stalls in existence for them to take over and drive out of
business, so what’s their route to rejoining polite society?

For the answer, you’re welcome to join me
on a visit to my state-of-the-art Political Rehab Clinic, tucked away in a
delightful rural setting reminiscent of a People’s
Friend calendar. We’ll have to make it a virtual tour, I’m afraid, unless
you’d prefer to be blindfolded and drugged by our state-of-the-art taxi drivers. We can’t take the risk of the electorate
discovering its location and turning up in force with pitchforks and firebrands.

After an initial sluicing to remove
residual oiliness, arriving ex-MPs are ushered into an echo chamber, to be
educated out of needing to have the last word. Usually they adjust, if only
through fatigue, within a few days. In the case of more persistent motor-mouths,
sedatives may be administered. There’s also an emergency procedure known as the
“George Galloway option” where the candidate is enclosed in a thick roll of
carpet, taken to a nearby empty house and left to knock himself senseless in
the inevitable fist fight.

Frequently subjects are unaware that, with
the loss of Parliamentary privilege, ordinary laws apply to them once more. In
extreme cases they may plummet from upper-storey windows under the
misconception that they can still defy gravity. Our next de-programming step,
therefore, is to put them through a gauntlet of Metropolitan Police officers,
who periodically shove them to the ground, hit them with riot shields and
prevent them from leaving the area for several hours. We tend to find that,
after a few episodes of that, they know their place pretty sharpish.

Specialised highly expensive treatments are
available depending on a candidate’s political history. Opposition politicians,
used to simply slagging off the Government no matter what it does, are offered
a brain transplant. Government politicians, accustomed to ramming their
measures through no matter what the human cost, qualify for a heart transplant.
Those eternally stuck in the middle, including the hapless Lib Dems, get an
implant of courage to combat their feelings of uselessness and irrelevance. Of
course, it’s all a pack of lies and we’re really just fooling everyone with
hypnosis, but we should be OK as long as no-one notices we stole the whole idea
from The Wizard of Oz.

Finally, and crucially, a team of
orthodontists is on hand to wire our patients’ jaws shut. Sorry, but we simply
have to stop them smiling at all costs. In fact this will probably happen
automatically when they realise the days of 11% annual pay increases are over,
but it’s best to err on the safe side.

It would be wonderful to be able to say
that alumni of our clinic go on to play useful roles in the community. Though
we do perform a valuable service that in my opinion deserves adulation and
massive financial rewards, we’re not miracle workers, so that remains a distant
aspiration. But all is not lost. In another part of our complex we’ve created
the ideal work environment to keep these poor unimaginative drones occupied for
the rest of their lives: a production line manufacturing huge numbers of
baseball bats.

What do we need all the baseball bats for?
Join me soon, and I’ll take you on a tour of our fabulous new treatment centre
for bankers.

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

Even though the grass refuses to stop growing and my unprotected
pate is sizzling gently in the Perthshire sun, I discover to my alarm that it’s
the first of October. It seems only fleeting moments ago that I started this blog, yet already here I am past the first part
of its title, with an ocean of possibilities stretching into the vast Beyond.

Time, therefore, to consider my own response to the huge question
occupying Yes supporters the length and breadth of the land. Where do we go from here?

First and foremost, as if you hadn’t already guessed, this
blog will be continuing. All the other bloggers on the indyref scene seem to be
hanging in there, and several enviably energetic and eloquent new voices are
also kicking down the door, so it would be crazy of me to leave the party now.

I’m even keeping the To
September And Beyond title. I’d hate to confuse my faithful and growing
readership by suddenly switching to another name and, more to the point, can’t currently
coax my brain into formulating anything better. Of course, if the independence referendum
that inevitably results from the Cameron/Farage junta yanking us out of the EU in
2017 is held in a month other than September, all bets are off.

It’s an impossible dream for this titchy wee blog to emulate
the “market leaders” such as Wings, Wee Ginger Dug, Bateman and the rest, but I’d
like at least to make a start down that path by updating it more frequently. Naturally, this will be impossible for me on
my own, given my inability to write the simplest of sentences without
chiselling away at the words for hours as if I’m Auguste bloody Rodin.

So I’d like to issue a general invitation to bloggers out
there, especially if you don’t have a site of your own, to contribute guest
posts to fill the gaps whenever I’m helpless in the grip of creative angst.
They don’t have to be humorous (especially if your jokes are better than mine),
but it would be handy if they were readable without too much editing, and about,
or with a slant on, Scottish politics.

I can’t promise to publish all submissions, because (a) I
may unexpectedly get swamped, (b) anything offensive, actionable, illegal or
unhinged will have to go in the bin, and (c) I’m a complete control freak. Those caveats apart, I’ll do my best, and if
I can’t find a place for something I’ll see if anyone else I know can. You’ll not receive any payment other than
kudos, and the occasional brickbat if you’re unlucky, but then neither do I.

If you’d like to send me something, just drop a line to william_duguid [at] hotmail.com,
replacing the [at] with @ when you mail.
Or you can just copy and paste the e-mail address from the top
right-hand corner of the blog!

Now, something else important.

There’s a lot of discussion going on at the moment, as the
grand panjandrums of the Yes movement figure out how best to enhance our “media
presence”, about sharing and co-operation. Newsnet Scotland, who made their own content
freely available to all-comers in the run-up to the referendum, waxed lyrical
about this on Monday in an article that gave a tantalising glimpse of the future.

That sounds a pretty neat idea, so in response I’d like to
state, quite explicitly, that anyone is
welcome to reproduce the posts on this blog without seeking advance permission from me. (That includes guest posts,
so be warned, aspiring scribblers!) All
I ask is that you credit the blog as your source and, if you possibly can, let
me know when you’ve done it, so that I can Tweet the blazes out of it. Hey, I’m a self-promoter at heart, not a total
altruist!

Oh, and if anybody involved with plans for a brilliant new
media platform needs any help or contributions from middle-aged fat blokes, yoo-hoo,
I’m right here! I’ll wear my bright
yellow Yestival shirt through the winter so that you can find me in the fog.

That’s about yer lot, readers, apart from one or two surprises I’m
hoping to inflict on you in the next few weeks, which are so secret even I don’t
know about them yet. Now I’m off to boak
my way through BBC iPlayer coverage of the Tory party conference, about which I expect
to unleash a rant some time before the end of the week. After an extended session of word-chiselling,
of course.

Ocean of possibilities, here we come. Inflatable armbands at the ready!

About Me

I'm a writer who returned to Scotland in 2013 after 30+ years in the Home Counties. If you enjoy reading my ramblings, please return often and recommend me to your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Planet Earth. That way someone may one day give me money to do this sort of thing, which would be nice.
william_duguid@hotmail.com